Mr. Puddlebox summoned much impressiveness into his voice. "Boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "this is a fool's game, and I never saw such even with you. Bring sense to it, boy. Tramping is well enough for fine days: winters for towns. There's money to be found in towns, boy; and if no money, workhouse is none so bad, and when we've tried it you've liked it and called it something new, which is what you want. Well, there's nothing new this way, boy. There's no work and there's no bed in the fields winter-time. Nothing new this way, boy."
A fiercer drive of wind spun Mr. Wriford where he stood exposed. He caught at a rock with his hands and laughed grimly, then stood erect again, and pressed himself against the rising gale.
"Ah, isn't there, though?" he cried. "Man, there's cold and rain and wind, and there's tramping on and on against it and feeling you don't care a damn for it."
"Well, curse me, but I do," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "It's just what I do mind, and there's no sense to it, boy. There's no sense to it."
"There is for me," Mr. Wriford cried. "It's what I want!" He turned from fronting the gale. Mr. Puddlebox saw him measuring with his eye the height where he stood from the ground, and called in swift alarm: "Don't jump! You'll break your legs. Don't—"
Mr. Wriford laughed aloud, jumped and came crashing to his hands and knees, got up and laughed again. "That's all right!" said he.
"Boy, that's all wrong," said Mr. Puddlebox very seriously. "That's all of a part with your rushing along as if it was the devil himself you chased; and what to the devil else it can be I challenge you to say or any man."
Mr. Wriford took up the words he had cried down from the top of the barrier. "It's what I want," he told Mr. Puddlebox. "Cold and not minding it, and fighting against the wind and not minding it, and getting wet and going on full speed however rough the road and not minding that. Cold and wind and rain and sticking to it and fighting it and beating it and liking it—ah!" and he threw up his arms, extending them, and filled his chest with a great breath, as though he embraced and drunk deep of the elements that he stuck to and fought and beat.
Mr. Puddlebox looked at him closely. "Sure you're liking it?" he asked, his tone the same as when he often inquired: "Sure you're happy, boy?"
"Sure! Why, of course I'm sure. Why, all the time I'm thrashing along, do you know what I'm saying? I'm saying: 'Beating you! Beating you! Beating you!' and at night I lie awake and think of it all waiting outside for me and how I shall beat it, beat it, beat it again when morning comes."